Apeirophobia
by Jassy Crooks
Summary: Apeirophobia: 'The fear of infinity'. Picture psych institutions and extreme insanity. I've always wanted Piper to go mad.
1. Silence

**-   Apeirophobia   -**

The fear of infinity… 

The phone crackled, as if opposing the deathly silence on both ends. Silence taunted both the ear of the broken girl and her sister. Swirling, deathly silence. Reeking of power. Threatening to control.

Sadistic and manipulative.

An inquisitive tongue nuzzled its way out from behind dry lips. Tasting the damp staleness of the air, it traced nervous lines upon the cracked redness.

Still, the silence reigned. 

_The world has lost its head _

_Every evil hour is filled with dread;_

_I'm floating on a lake, but upside down_

_And when I try to breathe I start to drown._

Once again abandoning their defences, the lips parted and allowed a small sigh to escape from their safety. _The only weapon against silence is sound_. Sure enough, fragments of the wicked stillness flew in every direction.

**_s_H_AtT_e_rE_d__**

It was now conceivable to speak.   

"Piper……….why?"

The natural instinct is to ask why. And fair enough, very few people can form logical thought patterns when they are told of something like this. But why, why? Is it the false idea that years of self-loathing, secret torment and silent terror can be quite simply summed up into a brief monologue to satisfy the curiosity of the questioner? A few words to explain a person's unspeakable desire for death and equate the questioner's overwhelming feelings of betrayal and anger. It is not possible to devise such words. 'Rape' just doesn't cut it. 'Incest', 'abuse' and 'torture' are nothing but expressions. 'Worthlessness' can be argued against, and 'misery' creates irritation. 

There is no insult greater than the word 'why'.

"Why not?"

"……………….Piper, I…I have to go now. Paige says 'hi'. She misses you a lot and wants you to come home soon. We'll, uhh, we should be around there to visit you in a week. Okay, sweetie?"

Sometimes silence can convey the most powerful of messages.

Piper listened to a sigh of defeat followed by the rhythmic and melodic ostinato of the beeping. Each tone identical to the last. Identical pitch. Identical sound waves. Identical air particles….. 

Twice the pace of her heart beat.

_The world has gone insane._

_*******_


	2. ...Time's Curse

  
Time was slow, as if oozing through the walls and seeping into the corridor of the ward. Two bold hands controlled the entire ward as they slid around the clock face at half the pace of a snail. 9:28…………9:28:01…………..

Two hours later it was 9:29.

Piper understood everything except the painfully, sluggish dripping of time. Seconds dribbled into minutes, minutes collapsed into hours. It seemed as though an hour would die of cardiac arrest before it could even consider becoming a day. But sure enough, from the moment her head hit the pillow each night, time on the ward was altered. The moon sailed through the sky on her journey and was finished in no longer than an hour. Time was a demon. The ruler of the ward. Exhaustion and fatigue were the only logical constants brought about by the monster. Cessation would never occur. 

_The world has lost its mind_

_Everywhere I turn I fear I'll find_

_Some nightmare even worse than those I see_

_Satanic demons closing in on me._

The beeping inside the phone stopped and Piper finally hung up. A young toddler stood before her and babbled in an alien language. Piper's eyes shifted frantically. She needed something that made sense. Consistency, conformity, anything!!!

The Newtonian laws of physics. 

_Newton's third law states that every action has an equal and opposite reaction._

Piper pushed the child. Sure enough, he fell to the floor. 

And then he screamed.

The doors flew open and in a second the room was flooded with the harshness of prickly agitation. Blurs of colour swept forwards, pulsing through the thick air and riding upon the crest of the waves of annoyance. Wave after wave crashed down around Piper, flooding her lungs and tearing at her head.

The world has gone insane Parasites are eating at my brain; 

_Nothing is the way it was before_

_A pack of wolves is howling at my door._

And then the child was gone. 

In its place rested millions of atoms. His remaining scent, the particles of bacteria. Each strand of bacteria containing millions of tiny proteins. Each proteins made up of their own individual nucleus. Each individual nucleus containing protons, neutrons and electrons, which themselves comprised of millions…………….. it went on and on. 

As did everything. 

Further and further into the indescribable entity of nothing and everything. 

**Infinity...**__

_I'm living in a non-stop nightmare, dead man's dream_

_Filled with screaming pain;_

_Turning me to mad extremes_

_In a world that's gone insane._

_**********_


End file.
